


Uncertainty Principle and Gremlins

by Inowbre



Series: The mad science wizard and the crazy alchemist [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Gremlins, Inanimate objects become animate, Mad Science, Mad Scientists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29412084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inowbre/pseuds/Inowbre
Summary: Gremlins serve an important role in the world, but what's a gremlin to do when a couple of mad scientists are essentially doing their job for them?
Series: The mad science wizard and the crazy alchemist [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842010





	Uncertainty Principle and Gremlins

**Author's Note:**

> A Valentine's gift from my friend who writes these to all his readers. As always I'm posting them for another writer who cannot post them himself, at his request. This is a cute one, enjoy!

The copper wire was live. Not just in the sense that electricity was flowing through it, but also in the sense that some errant bits of magic had turned the thing into a snake. Albrecht was having a most frustrating time trying to tame the thing, for some reason it just didn't want to listen to reason and kept trying to zap him.

"Look, all I need you to do is connect to that circuit over there," the wizard said with barely concealed impatience, pointing at the array of engines only a few feet away. The lightning blue 'eyes' that hovered over the cable narrowed with displeasure and it jolted forward, bouncing off his conjured lightning shield. He sighed and rubbed at his temple. Why couldn't problems be ones he'd solved before? It would make life so much easier.

"Gerald!" he called. The zombie tugged itself over one arm length at a time, the freshly oiled wheels of its cart hardly making a sound. Gerald chittered something in its own private language and stared up at him expectantly. A pair of strawberries sat on the little cart at the back, leaning against the zombie and snoring. Dezzie's damn little inventions had attached themselves to Albrecht's best necromantic experiment and the damn corpse seemed fond of them too.

"Can you-" Albrecht hesitated as he considered the ridiculous words he was about to say. Unfortunately they were the right ones. "Can you organize some fruit and deal with this cable? You might be able to knock it out with some wood."

Gerald pulled off what was, for it, a fairly sharp salute- joints cracked and popped as the arm flailed about wildly. Its arm snaked around to poke at the strawberries and there was a brief conversation in growls, then the fruit hopped off with a cheer and ran to the other end of the room. The zombie moved off to grab a short-tongued pitchfork, which was a surprisingly good idea.

"Excuse me," a shrill voice piped up from behind Albrecht. He turned around, giving the cable a shot at his back that it took without hesitation. The wizard glared at the cable for a moment, then began to consider the usefulness of holding onto the thing... it wouldn't be too hard to make a new cable, and the live wire might have its uses in security...

"Ahem." Oh, right. People. Albrecht looked down at the table in front of him and saw a small person standing there. The creature was maybe six inches tall, green skinned, with black eyes too big for its head, and wearing a brown lab coat along with some kind of metal hat. He gave the wizard a broad smile and held out a hand, the other holding a clipboard. "Name's Kremlin. Gremlin Union office 1557. Are you the owner of this business?"

Albrecht arched a crazed white eyebrow. "Are you a customer? I'm not supposed to talk to customers."

"What, really?"

"It's something related to me being so much smarter than everyone. I make people feel stupid and then they don't buy things." Albrecht scowled at the illogic of it all. Being smarter meant people should listen to him when he told them how to fix their problems!

"...huh." The gremlin blinked a few times. "Um. Well. No, I'm not a customer, persay. More like... an employee?"

"Oh, you're one of those. So you're here to waste my time. Gerald, how's the cable wrangling going?" Albrecht turned around to see a strawberry go flying through the air screaming in rage while the copper wire thrashed about. The zombie fielded the fruit with the pitchfork, then rejoined the fray. Electrical discharges grounded themselves in every bit of metal within range, mostly nails in the wall, and sometimes sent out a spray of sparks. It seemed like things were well in hand.

"Sir, I really must insist on talking to the owner. If that isn't you, could you direct me to them?"

"Hm? Well, of course I'm the owner! My name is over the door, isn't it?"

"Ah, so you're Dezzie?"

Albrecht's eyes narrowed to a line and he held up a hand, small licks of flame encircling his fingers. "Do I look like some half-crazed lunatic working with potions?"

Kremlin paused in writing on his clipboard. "Then you'd be... Albrecht?" he offered hesitantly.

"Yes! Look, what do you want? As you can tell, I'm busy!" More lightning bounced around the room. The gremlin looked around Albrecht and pulled his hat down tighter.

"As I said, I'm with the Gremlin Union 1557. We've been experiencing some strange troubles here at your business, and I've been sent to investigate them, as per standard policy."

Albrecht stared down for a while. "Dezzie!" he abruptly yelled over the fight in the background.

"What?" a woman called back.

"Did you hire bloody gremlins while I wasn't paying attention?"

"Why would I hire gremlins?!"

"Because you're Dezzie!" Albrecht said as if that explained everything. "Look, Kremlin, was it?"

"At your service," the little man said with a bow.

"I've never seen any gremlins in my shop, the lunatic hasn't hired any, and I *certainly* haven't hired any. So I think you're in the wrong place."

Kremlin flipped through some papers. "No, no, I'm fairly certain this is the right place. And really, it's not so much that we're hired by the clients. We sorta work for... well, the universe at large. I have to say, this is incredibly unusual to end up meeting face to face with a client, we hadn't dusted off those procedures in quite some time."

"You work for the universe? By doing... what?"

"Oh, well we make sure things go wrong," the gremlin said happily. His smile dimmed in the face of Albrecht's confusion. "Look, we gremlins have an important job, alright? Without us, it would play merry hell with the Uncertainty Principle, and believe you me, no one wants that. Last time things went wrong, it turned the whole of reality this pale off green color, it was very disconcerting and a lot of paperwork."

"So..." Albrecht said slowly. "You're telling me that you make sure things go wrong... in order to keep the universe from breaking?"

"Got it in one! And I have to say, things here are very concerning for the home office."

Albrecht looked back at the ensuing war between living power cord, zombie, and various fruits then turned his gaze to the gremlin. "Are they?"

"Yes." Kremlin flipped through more papers then started reading. "We've had nearly forty injury claims in the last year from fruit related accidents alone. That's an unusually high rate for a non-orchard, I'm sure you understand. Insurance is throwing a tizzy, but when *they* sent over a representative to figure out what was going they got attacked by a tribe of kumquats. And that's not even going into problems with elementals, living suitcases, and so on. That's a big part of the problem is the safety concerns."

"I don't see how I'm at fault for your employees being unable to keep rampaging fruit at bay."

"Well, no one is saying you are, not as such... but it is a serious problem, I'm sure you agree?"

"Yes. Yours."

Kremlin sighed. "Please work with me here, Mister Albrecht, I'm trying to keep things nice."

"And when they stop being nice?"

"Oh, you don't want to know what happens then."

"I'm pretty sure I just asked."

"It involves trolls, I'll leave it at that."

Albrecht glanced at the troll head mounted on the wall from his old adventuring days. "You'll need to try better than that."

"Hm?" The gremlin followed Albrecht's gaze and blanched. "Uh. Well. Then. Anyway." He cleared his throat. "The bigger problem is something strange that's never happened before. We're getting reports of... well, some of the workers have been feeling redundant here. We're really not sure what to do about that, although we've been talking to the brownies about improving conditions here-"

"Absolutely not!" Albrecht snapped. "Damn bastards clean things up, it just makes a mess!"

"Er. That's the opposite of a mess..."

"Semantics! Look, I don't see why you're here bothering me about all of these problems that are, I repeat, *your problems*. I have more important work to do than argue with some little pixie-"

"Gremlin."

"Whatever! As you can tell, I have plenty of work trying to keep my lab from tearing itself apart all on my own, I don't need *your* help with that." Albrecht said this last with more than a bit of pride. He did just fine in making the proper chaos of the universe work on its own with his experiments, thank you very much. "I think that this conversation is done, Mr Kremlin from the gremlins, so I bid you good day."

"But, but, sir this situation must be resolved somehow!"

"Not my problem. I-" Albrecht paused as a moment of inspiration struck him. Or possibly some of the zapping from the live cable got through his shield. Either way, his mouth turned from its habitual scowl into a very satisfied smile. "You said that you're having problems with your workers feeling redundant in my lab?"

"Well, also in the alchemist's lab, but-"

"Well, there's a simple solution to this all, then!" Albrecht said with a delighted clap of his hands. A strawberry flew by his head by a matter of inches and bounced off the table that Kremlin stood on. "You need to have your workers in here, but they aren't necessary for the job? It's just so... genius!"

"I'm... not following you..." the gremlin said slowly, staring after the disappearing strawberry with some concern.

"Isn't it obvious? For a small fee, say, enough to cover our rent, we'll turn this into the first ever outsourced training center for gremlins! That way we can help improve your ability to assist in a well-managed universe by wrecking things in other shops. It's perfect!"

Kremlin stared at him for a while then tilted his head sideways. "I... guess that might work? We'll have to chat with our insurance company about the idea, though, cause premiums will definitely be going up."

"That sounds like another one of your problems," Albrecht said distractedly, thoughts racing down this new path. "Here, let's test this plan. Do you have any rubber gloves in your size?"

"Er. Well. Yes?"

"Perfect!" Albrecht pulled out his own pair, snapping them in place, then pulled down his goggles. "The fruit and Gerald seem to be failing at their attempts to wrangle that copper wire. Let's start putting together module one of the training course- surviving high voltage equipment!"


End file.
